by Paul Morand
“The Boisrosés don’t look like their mother fortunately,” said Amyot, “but I know what you mean. When you possess a beautiful piece of original cire perdue, you wouldn’t want the sculptor selling his reproduction rights to a maker of chimney stacks. Nevertheless, you have to resign yourself; Boisrosé habits are stronger and the Boisrosé girls less pliable than the hardest of metals. This family is a voodoo sect in which the sons-in-law are sympathizers, not founder members. There’s nothing to be done, we might as well give up.”
“I won’t give up anything,” exclaimed Pierre, his brush in one hand, his comb in the other. “As far as I’m concerned, I’m absolutely determined to have Hedwige to myself alone. And what’s more, it’s already happening: she dresses in her own clothes and none of her sisters wear her shoes any longer.”
“One question,” asked Amyot. “Has Hedwige kept her bed at Saint-Germain?”
“Er… I think she did, just in case of a breakdown… or fog… it would be better than sleeping in a hotel.”
“My poor fellow!” said Amyot, squeezing his brother-in-law’s hand affectionately.
“I’m not disturbing you?” said Hedwige as she opened the door.
“You’re only disturbing yourself, my beloved darling, for I was with you.”
“With me?”
“Yes, I was thinking of you. I was thinking that you are relaxation.”
“That’s not very flattering.”
“Yes, when I say it, it’s high praise.”
In fact Pierre, whose long strides make the house tremble during his soliloquies, is standing still, relaxing and pressing his lips to his wife’s wrist in the way one drinks spa water from the place where the water is warmest.
“You’re here,” he said, filled with joy, “it’s good.”
He takes her in his arms.
“When I come close to you, not only do I feel your body, but I am in touch with all bodies. Before knowing you, I lived in isolation as though on a glass shelf in an electric machine. But now the current passes through me.”
Hedwige snuggled up to him for fear of being looked at from a distance and so that he wouldn’t notice her disappearing waist when standing in front of her, or her convex belly from the side. But by clasping her to him, he can imagine what his gaze might not have noticed, closes his eyes and says:
“It’s beginning to show, and seriously so.”
“Too bad,” Hedwige replies, torn between the pleasure of appearing beautiful and pride at being a mother.
“So much the better.”
Hedwige closes her eyes, happy to feel her two children pressed one against the other, because Pierre, who used to seem so strong, so Zeus-like, so striking in the early days, has, through their living together, become her child. “He’s a funny boy,” she says tenderly, almost with compassion, feeling indulgent and full of pity, like most women, for the incomprehensible side of their male partner, for their mysterious obsessions—for they all have one—be it gardening, civic duty, curing illnesses, war or any other mission they believe they have been given; just like those elderly retired colonels who, in order to give themselves the illusion of being busy, indulge in having imaginary mobilization orders sent to themselves. Every male thus creates a curious structure for himself in which he pays homage to a god, a demi-god, a folly. Any altar, however peculiar it may be, can be used to inspire a new zest in someone and give them a reason for living. Hedwige was not trying to delve into Pierre’s motives; he was a man: that was explanation enough. Her husband’s frantic pace, this invariable way he had of changing his mind, this need to take not just an overall view of things, but to see the same thing from every angle by skipping from one point of the compass to another, like our present-day landscape artists who follow the sun with their canvases in their motor cars, with that enthusiasm for seeing everything and considering nothing, for doing everything and not completing anything, for running from an occasion to an event and from a situation to an occurrence—all this was tiring, certainly, and pointless, but it was the other side of the coin to a husband who was kind on the whole, gentle, delightful at times, but devoid of any self-control.
“Poor Pierre!” Hedwige would murmur simply whenever her sisters discussed him; Pierre’s name made everyone itch to speak and they even preferred to say good things rather than not talk about him. Mamicha, raising her white fringe and her august chin, added some perfidious proverb from the West Indies, a land scarcely filled with serpents, and called her daughters to come closer.
“You’re too far away, I can’t hear half of what you’re saying.”
“Here we are; we’re climbing onto the bed.”
And gathered together under the eiderdown, resembling on a large scale those families of dogs, cats or mice in cartoon drawings, they embarked delightedly on the agenda for the day: Uncle Rocheflamme’s affair with a second-hand goods dealer of his own age (“For an old lady friend, ring out the bells,” Mamicha said with a smile), the choice of carpet for the drawing room, Fromentine’s new hairstyle… Hedwige was totally happy. Had she been more honest or more experienced in self-analysis, she would have realized that saying “Poor Pierre” expressed her regret at not really being able to love him. For her, amusement and variety were to be found in Neuilly, but happiness had never stopped residing at Saint-Germain.
People’s separations or their lack of feeling for one another are no doubt the work of superior powers who have arbitrarily forced us into avoidable encounters, then snatched us away and cast us aside. The same oppressive and blind force which, in Bonne de Boisrosé’s games of patience, prevented the kings from emerging by covering them with sevens and ruining her future prospects, also intervened to separate Hedwige from Pierre and brought her back irresistibly into her mother’s little game. There are unions that the fairies, either out of laziness or through a subtle form of cruelty, allow to be fruitful yet are not blessed by them.
In any case, the fairies were not the only ones to blame; they had, exceptionally, given Pierre a brief reprieve in the course of his destiny, an hour during which, by initiating Hedwige into the pleasures of the flesh, he might have made himself master; he had allowed this moment to pass. Hedwige, disappointed by Pierre, whose clumsiness in matters of love increased day by day the more he became aware of it, was filled with all the inhibitions that Bonne, through long and patient methods of suggestion, had impressed upon her daughters as a precaution against men: man was a social necessity, a fastidious and repulsive physical burden. The beautiful, adorable Hedwige was ruined for love.
The baby brought her even closer to her mother than to her husband. Secretly, on her child’s behalf, she feared this fiery and untidy father, whereas at Saint-Germain it would be pampered and cosseted: “He’s a Boisrosé, he’s got his grandfather’s eyes.” “No, she’s a Rocheflamme one hundred per cent.” The shoot born of Hedwige would prosper well in the warm and humid Boisrosé climate, shielded from those drying desert winds that Pierre left in his wake. In that sweet atmosphere of animal-like tenderness, in that pastoral home life, in that manger where gods could be raised, Hedwige was already imagining her mother and her sisters passing round a magnificent little baby.
In the large room with its blinds lowered so as to protect the young woman’s weary eyes, a ray of sunshine filters in, caresses Hedwige’s neck, a powerful and flexible column that disappears into the darkness of the feathery black hair with golden tints, and proceeds to split in two the body of Pierre who, with much waving of arms, is trying to explain what his son will be like. On this subject, he is as loquacious as his wife is laconic. The still invisible child is constantly present between them; an expression of that subconscious and frenzied imperialism of the self that constantly drives us to extend our fleshly frontiers, it stimulates Pierre and excites his avid impatience.
“Will he ever be born,” he wonders, “this lazy creature, this troglodyte? For the time being, he is withdrawing like a hermit, ‘feeling his life (and not his deat
h) imminent’, he confines himself to his pool, like a fish, but without the nimble flick of the tail and the rapid fins that fish have. It’s inconceivable that someone born of me should be so slow! What a silly invention pregnancy is! Nature goes on its way like a doddery, elderly childminder and the doctors are unable to invent anything to speed up the event… Five months still!”
“Pierre,” says Hedwige, “come and sit down beside me on the sofa. See how soft this velvet is and I’ll put this batiste cushion behind your head, which will refresh you. You’re flushed and your eyes are all feverish. What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong, I’m thinking of the little one. I’m happy to know he’s inside you. For him as for me you’re a wonderful mother; he’ll have your beauty, your balanced mind. Later on, when the years have hardened him, he can if he wishes take something from me. Just think, Hedwige, he’s going to be thrown among a million men, all naked, with his horoscope under his arm!”
Pierre is bent over the abyss of coming days and distant years. He sees a large-limbed little boy, moving very nimbly between four escape routes and entering the increasingly narrow corridor of the sequence of time. He sees him as a Peter Pan running beneath the tall trees. He attaches this still corpuscular fate to his own destiny.
Will he or she be dark or fair? Punctual or late? Nestlé’s milk or breast-fed? Boarder or half-day? The lycée or a religious institution? Dim or gifted? Latin or Greek? German studies or English? Sacré-Coeur or Sciences politiques? Infantry or artillery? Will he make women suffer or will they dominate him? When he’s twenty, who will be declaring war on whom? What will the world be like? What shape will hats and ideas have?
If you want to escape from your own self, there is no better means than a child.
“Hedwige, have you thought of ordering the baby clothes? And the nursery furniture that hasn’t yet been chosen! We haven’t planned a thing. I’m going to buy the baby clothes.”
“Five months beforehand!” said Hedwige, who could not help laughing.
“From baby clothes to bare knees and from bare knees to trousers, it’s no time at all…”
He doesn’t want to anticipate the long journey from the first cry to the alphabet, from crawling games to the first tottering steps that look like a drunkard walking, from standing up and holding on to the bedcovers to running. Good heavens, what an eternity exists between the eyes of the mole and the fleeting glance of the lynx!
“Pierre le Bref,” said Hedwige sweetly, “I can see you’re bored, you’ve still got your hands clenched in your pockets. Why don’t you go out? Go and do your shopping.”
And Pierre went out to stretch his legs.
He talked to himself as he strode through the streets.
“Ah! If it were me in that baby’s place, I’d soon be bursting through the hoop and marching head first into the future!”
CHAPTER XX
PIERRE WAS PACING up and down the drawing room. Hedwige’s face had turned a magnificent golden-green colour.
“Listen, Hedwige, be reasonable. You need some fresh air. Ten days by the sea will do us both good. We’re leaving tomorrow. The tickets are bought, the rooms are booked…”
Hedwige closed her eyes; when Pierre had gone past she opened them again, but there was a moment when he was briefly silhouetted against the light, when he glided between her and the window, that was so painful to her that she shut her eyelids tightly so that she would not see him. It was tiresome, this striding up and down, as if he were riding on a swing after lunch. Hedwige glanced at her husband out of the corner of her eye, ready to avoid his trajectory. In contrast, all this commotion drove her back towards her mother as if to a lost paradise, making her nostalgic for the solid Boisrosé bed.
“You don’t want to? But why, for goodness’ sake, why?”
Her feeling of giddiness only grew. With his comings and goings, Pierre was dragging her into a waltz without music. It was a choppy passage that made her stomach feel empty and gave her a headache and an intensification of the feelings of nausea due to pregnancy.
“Oh, I know very well why. I’ve known for a long time that you’d prefer to die and make me pine away here than to be without your mother for ten days.”
Pierre’s pacing to and fro was becoming unbearable. The furniture now seemed to be rolling about, the piano was shaking and the pictures were shuttling back and forth on the walls, which were also swirling. Even though she was sitting down, Hedwige could not understand why the rug under her feet appeared to be rising upwards while the paintings were obeying some invisible gyratory impulse.
“What’s the matter? You’re very pale,” Pierre exclaimed all of a sudden, seeing Hedwige’s cheeks lose their colour and turn a shade of banana. “Have I upset you? Have I displeased you?”
Hedwige was unable to reply.
She waved her hand in a wide gesture and ran to the bathroom.
She returned a few moments later, her hair back in place, her face re-powdered, her eyes shining. She sat down next to Pierre and put her arm through his.
“My Pierre,” she said gently, “don’t criticize me for loving my family. Does it prevent me from loving you? Would you prefer it if I spent my time running around dressmakers’ shops and going to tea parties instead of frolicking innocently in that warm tropical bath that is my family? A poor little family adrift in France, which goes largely unnoticed, which lives on its own and which does no harm to anyone. But if you wanted to drag them away, you would find you could not shift them. When I think of us Boisrosés, I’m always reminded of our mangrove trees. Have you ever seen any? No? A mangrove looks like a bundle of dead wood drifting from the shore into the sea. When we were children, paddling around at Anse à Banane, we used to try and take these bits of wood home, but our hands would immediately start bleeding and we couldn’t pick anything up. Mangroves are the most resistant things in the world; they have claw-like fingers that for millions of years have clung to the earth, driven up by the tides. We were taught that we owed the fact that we were walking on firm ground to the mangrove trees. Ever since then, I’ve always thought that nations should be grateful to mangrove families rather like ours, to women who collectively, without any other strength apart from their fingers, endured wars, flooding, bankruptcy, revolutions, men’s failures, and all the calamities.”
“You don’t have to behave like a mangrove tree with me,” said Pierre, “I’ll never let you go. Think of me as an extra root.”
Hedwige pressed her warm cheek to her husband’s.
“Very well, but you must do one little favour for me: buy a trinket from Uncle Rocheflamme.”
“Ah, no! That would be a dangerous precedent! I don’t like antiques, I only like antiquities. On the other hand, you can go and buy all his stuff if you’d like, on condition that I don’t see it… The cloister is going to be sold; all that remains is to exchange signatures; the money is yours.”
“Mine!” Hedwige repeated in amazement. “But Pierre, it’s your only capital. You know very well that apart from the Mas Vieux and the cloister, all you have is what you earn.”
“Yes,” Pierre said simply, “it’s my only capital and that’s why it must belong to you.”
Pierre threw his coat on a chair, removed his collar and flopped down on the bed, his legs spread wide; he had just returned from his morning shopping and was sweating profusely; this exceptionally warm June weather made him feel on edge and the “Year 1000 Exhibition” that he had agreed to organize was causing him problems, meetings, discussions and a great deal of work he could have done without.
“Would I not do better,” he thought, “to devote my days to Hedwige? She must still be there waiting for me as she is every morning. It’s at least two weeks since I last had my coffee with her.”
He stood up, ready to run round to see his wife, he imagined her bustling calmly around the small breakfast table; he knew in advance that he wanted to experience that peace that only she could provide him with. T
o his surprise, he was overcome with a drab and lethargic sense of aversion. No, he did not wish to go and call on Hedwige: why? Ideas flitted around his head and he watched them developing without trying to marshal them; he enjoyed this shifting monologue in which absurd images—cruel, tender and bitter—jostled with one another.
Clearly, this fulfilment, this restfulness that he enjoyed when he was with Hedwige, was something he no longer required as much. Why? Was it because he knew from experience that it would be followed by a frenzy of excitement immediately afterwards? Just as the sea, momentarily calmed when drenched with oil, draws itself back all the more ferociously, scarcely had he relaxed for a few minutes in Hedwige’s presence, scarcely had he fondled her soothing hands, than a sudden reaction made him stand upright. The calm that her Creole beauty gave him was nothing but a West Indian lull. “You’re marvellous, my beloved,” he would say, but he walked straight to the front door and, once past the door, he broke into a fit of irrational agitation.
Furthermore, he could no longer bear to see the belly from which the child would not emerge, could not emerge for four months at least. These four months weighed upon Pierre, paralysed his feelings towards Hedwige and prevented him from enjoying this woman whom he loved dearly. So he staved off his hunger by visiting museum curators and by writing lots of letters, scribbling daily with an increasingly leaky pen in halting words that were rather like sparks, in which the crosses preceded the t by a mile and the dots shot off well in advance of the i; sometimes the weary thought preceded him and he was obliged to correct the inconsistency and fill in the spaces with additions in the margin that made everything illegible. The thoughts also outstripped the words and made him reel off the end of sentences without altering the beginning. And when he shook hands he did so with a series of jolting and emotional squeezes.
